


The Man on the Hotel Room Bed

by elixia13



Category: X-Files - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-29
Updated: 2010-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-06 19:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elixia13/pseuds/elixia13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MulderAngst while he's on a case during Scully's abduction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man on the Hotel Room Bed

**Author's Note:**

> This story is inspired by the poem "The Man on the Hotel Room Bed" by the contemporary American poet Galway Kinnell.

"He shifts on the bed carefully, so as  
not to press through the first layer  
into the second, which is permanently sore.  
For him sleep means lying as still as possible  
for as long as possible thinking the worst."  
from "The Man on the Hotel Room Bed" by Galway Kinnell

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mulder clumsily runs his key card through the reader and walks into the hotel  
room. Dropping his bag on the floor, he moves past the bathroom, past the TV,  
and sinks down onto the bed. His suit hangs off him limply, rumpled,  
forgotten; he's been wearing it for at least two days. For the two days he's  
been working on the VCS case he's assigned to. Profiling another monster,  
pulling a woman--still alive, thank god--out of her captor's van. The local  
bureau agents thanked him and let him go, and his flight back will be tomorrow  
morning. Alone. Back to a DC with no Scully and some more fun the with the  
boys in profiling.

As Mulder lies there on the bed, knowing he should sleep, knowing that he  
hasn't slept at all in two days and precious little for the last month, he  
feels the tiredness settle in his body. It begins in his throat, and spreads  
down into his chest, his lungs, making his breathing heavy. As his heart  
slowly beats, the weariness spreads down his arms, into his back, his clenched  
stomach, his sore ribs. His legs that, all on their own in the night, dream of  
running, of chasing after something too far away to ever catch.

He will have to sleep. If he lies awake all night, shifting slowly through his  
layers of guilt, he will go mad. At least the dark madness of his nightmares  
fades in the morning. Most times he remembers nothing at all, sometimes just a  
washed-out image. A woman turned away from him, a tear sliding down her cheek.  
A soft, cool hand on his forehead, brushing stray hair back from his hot, dry  
face.

Other times a spiked, bright flash of dream comes to him while he's taking his  
morning shower. Water pouring onto his back, shampoo in his hair, and then the  
pits full of bodies, the fire, the gunshots. More than once he's ended up  
doubled over in his bathtub, and it disturbs him more than he's willing to  
admit. One day they might find him with his head cracked open, and he would  
never know it. He would die trapped in his nightmare, in his own hell.

If he stays away tonight, that will be one less nightmare, but one more night  
of lying like this, awake, on a hotel room bed, awash in the strength of his  
desire for times and people past. Playing his mental slide show of horrors, of  
the people he failed, he learns this litany of guilt like a prayer. Saying it  
over to prevent forgetting, he lets his mind play the images. *Love is the  
religion that bereaves the bereft.*

Bright copper hair gleams in the twilight of the basement office, a smile as  
she turns around to greet him. She reaches out to touch him with one white  
hand. His eyes search for hers, clinging to her gaze as though to hold her,  
but the image goes dark. His skin feels colder, and the light comes up slowly  
revealing his father. The man looks firmly at Mulder and steps forward as  
though to bridge the distance. But he falls away into a teeming blackness  
below, and the light from above becomes increasingly bright until it surrounds  
Mulder. He seems to be swimming in an ocean of light, and looks to his side to  
see his sister. Her long brown hair floats on the surface, suffused with  
brilliance. She giggles and steps further, deeper, a look of daring in her  
eyes. He reaches out to stop her, but an unseen tide sweeps her away, into the  
source of the brightness, away from him. The light dims, and he seems to see  
his mother's arms reaching up as though to hold him, but she turns away. Her  
hands to her face, she lets him fall.

With a harsh gasp he wakes up, in his suit, on the hotel room bed, to see the  
first pink of morning staining the sky. All his life, he has searched for the  
truth, risen each morning to pray to his faith of memory. He has held to a  
rope, tracing a path back to its origins, but he feels his hands going slack,  
his steps slowing. Slowly rising, he gathers the pain and weariness back into  
his core, back into the hard, sore place in his body where the fear rests. In  
the faint light of dawn, he can see the night of the next day already forming.


End file.
